Does Piracy Hinder Consoles ?

Yes and no. I just read the whole thread and I agree with alot of opinions on both sides. Theres no definitive answer for this one. I feel bad for the little company thats trying to get it´s foot in the door, yes piracy hurts them. But the huge monopolies(that use cutthroat tactics themselves), I feel no pity for. I liked the cartoon.
As for the piracy killing the psp, I doubt it. I think Sony might do more damage to itself(with its piracy paranoia). Don´t forget this is the company that put a rootkit in their audio cds(illegaly) and then lied about it. with there constant firmware updates it seems they´re trying their best to push away the homebrew community. Another thing I don´t agree on is , There should be a mandatory firmware requirement listed on the packaging. I have to buy the game to find out if I can play as is? nope thats wrong. High priced umds sure ain´t going to be helping video sales either. Lets see how the game selection is going to be, I feel the psp is getting seriously neglected due to the psp3. If there are good games, people will buy them but if they suck, the piracy thing doesnt really matter(who wants to play a shitty pirated game?)
There is one point I noticed nobody mentioned here. The GAMING industry has now passed the movie industry in sales. Piracy or not Somebody´s making huge bucks,lol
Well just my 2 cents, Peace!

"This is a little off topic, but who thinks priacy is going to kill the PSP?"

No it wont. You have to remember that the psp is not *just* a gaming device. Sony would surely recognises that not every1 is going to use it for games and thus unlike some other consoles (e.g. Xbox) they would be turing a profit on the hardware itself. If everybody used pirated games sony would still be making money, just not as mush as they might like. It would have an impact on developers though and may drive some away from the system, but the psp would not die.

Anyway I dont think that piracy is really that bigger issue on the PSP. Sure many people here have 1.5s (Maybe a little under half?) but then again for most of them that's cause they dont wanna loose homebrew. The average psp owner doesn't know how to use isos and has no second thoughts in updating firmware. Honestly I think if Sony allowed homebrew (But still made loaders illigal) and sold an official, supported SDK people us there would be less of an anti-sony sentiment amoungst us tech types and people would be more inclined to by their games. I refuse to upgrade and as a result they loose out in me not buying games. Stupid sony.......

Hello:

This is always the main topic for everyone in the industry. How they can make ways to reduce piracy of copywrited content. It is impossible to eliminated. As long as people creates laws and restrictions there is always someone daring enough to bend them or break them.

In the case of the video game industry, every new console means the next level of entertainment development. Each console or handheld incarnation takes a lot fo time, effort and money to create a proper software that match these criteria. Each time more expensive than the last one. They want to make sure they can, at least, go to a break-point in the sales of their products.

Piracy constitutes the major threat for every single developer. They can estimate that hundreds of millions of dollars are losing each time their games are sold pirated. Losing software sales always accompany the raise in hardware sales in order to get pirated games.

Of course, even I would like to receive free games for the hardware I bought. Not always is the case.

Still the Video Games industry have to be creative to make sales for the games they put on the store shelves.

We will see the future of the next-gen consoles in the endless battle against piracy as the years passed.

ive got to say i feel nothing wrong about "stealing" from microsoft. I bought xp the first time rebuilt my pc and they expect me to pay another 100 or so quid (which i just cant afford) crazy :s.

anyways if i like a game i buy it legally i just like the whole deal of a new non pirated game

what i was thinking is that sure, piracy brings console sales up, but software sales down. since companies lose money making consoles and make money back with software sales, piracy is definantly bad for the companies that make consoles. (and the companies that make games too)

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Originally Posted by kcc86

It's just too easy to play isos on the PSP. It seems like every other person has a 1.5 psp also.

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It is easy to play EARLIER PSP games in ISO form. Newer games require sophisticated loaders, special folders and files on root of memory stick, PPF patches, replacement of PRX files, etc. etc. And you can ONLY play ISO's on 1.50 PSP's period. Not 1.51, 1.52, 2.00, etc.

I would be very interested in finding or learning the facts about how many 1.50 PSP users there are. Is it just in the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions? I'm guessing its in the tens of thousands at most.

I hope there are 1,000,000 1.50 PSP users or more but that is probably not likely. The more 1.50 PSP users, the stronger PSP homebrew will get and it will continue to expand as fast as it is.

I don't know the latest sales figures of the PSP but I know that the cumulative production shipment of its PSP handheld had reached 10 million units worldwide, as of October 21st, 2005. Shipment of 10 million units within 10 months since launch is the fastest penetration of any PlayStation platform from the past.

With that said I think it would be safe to assume that Sony has probably now sold 15-20 million. Out of all the millions of PSP owners, how many actually download ISO's? I know for sure it is in the thousands. I don't think it is enough of a widespread threat to cause major harm to the Sony PSP.

I am not afraid to admit that I download PSP ISO's. Mostly Japanese & Europe-Only games that I can't get elsewhere without paying a high price and large import shipping costs. Hell, I am downloading a Europe-Only game right now as I type this. I love playing ISO's as a lot of games can be reduced to a small size, they load & play faster, and I can have several on my memory stick at the same time. No switching UMD's everytime I need to play a different game. To those with higher firmwares who have never tried or have been able to play ISO's, it is easy to think it is too much of a hassle to bother with and flame the people who admit to it. But if those people tried it, they would see that it is pretty cool and a lot of games with deadly loading times are much more enjoyable in ISO form.

I must also state that I do also own close to 30 LEGAL commercial UMD games. I am a collector at heart with obsessive compulsive tendencies :-) so I like to have the case, manual, and all the other goodies in a complete mint condition package. So even though I can download some games, I'll still want to buy the actual UMD. And I think any PSP owner who has purchased 30 UMD games in just a little over a year is the favorite kind of customer to Sony.

Another thing I need to point out is that in a way Sony has forced me to resort to playing ISO's. I don't want to upgrade past 1.50 firmware. But if the ONLY way for me to play games like Lemmings, Ys Ark of Napishtim, Monster Hunter Freedom, Mega Man, Gradius, etc. etc. is to back them up to ISO then that is what I must do. UMD games should be playable on ALL firmwares unless the game utilizes some feature only capable with a higher firmware. Most games that can't be played via UMD on 1.50 CAN still be played on the PSP in ISO form so a higher firmware is not necessary to run the game. This proves that its just Sony's way to try and keep homebrew quarantined to a very small percentage.

Sony, you need to allow all commercial UMD games to run on 1.50 PSP's or I will continue to use ISO's. Simple as that. And I know others feel the same.

But anyway, with all that said, my point is that although playing pirated games on the PSP may be easier than on some other platforms, it is not a widespread practice large enough to significantly impact the PSP's lifespan. The PSP is not going anywhere. Us homebrew & ISO users are not killing the PSP. If anything, we are helping the PSP.

Yet another thing I must put a strong emphasis on is that it is much easier to download Nintendo GBA & DS ROMS. Get a cheap Super Pass cart and a 1GB SD memory card and voila! Unlimited FREE GBA games on any GBA, GBA MICRO, DS, DS Lite, etc. What's funny about this is that Nintendo is always beating Sony when it comes to both hardware & software sales of their portable devices. Nintendo is doing better than ever and it is all due to the GBA & DS. Much easier pirated than the PSP. So again, piracy in terms of the portable gaming market is not that large of a threat and not causing much harm.

The ironic thing to all of this is that we are all helping Sony combat Piracy. Many corporations and 3rd party developers have teams assigned to gather "human intelligence" - Some are called community management teams. They scour the WEB to monitor all of these forums, fan-made websites, etc. It is very easy for these teams to infiltrate forums such as this and gather this information pretending to be just another homebrew user. None of us would be able to tell otherwise. So as soon as an exploit is found or a new firmware decrypted, or a new game is patched to play in ISO form, SONY and the 3rd party developers know just as soon as we do and are able to plug the hole that was found. We do most of the work for them.

Sony won't be trying to shut down this website or any others. We are a valuable tool and reliable source of intel for them.

Now back to my ISO download ;-)

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Originally Posted by kcc86

That's a good point no one even brought up.

This is a little off topic, but who thinks priacy is going to kill the PSP? It's just too easy to play isos on that thing. It seems like every other person has a 1.5 psp also.

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No, what's going to kill the PSP is a) the games and b) Nintendo. Either alone wouldn't kill it, but unless Sony stops wasting their time playing heavy-hand on homebrew developers and starts focusing on taking down the GB empire, it will eventually fail.

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Originally Posted by Voltron

And you can ONLY play ISO's on 1.50 PSP's period.

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you can also play ISO's on 1.00:D

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Originally Posted by nonarKitten

starts focusing on taking down the GB empire, it will eventually fail.

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Its not in competition with game boy... its with the ds... and i say its better and i think people are a little too high up on their mighty ds thrones pointing out negitives about psp

and i believe now (after the 1,000 updates) isos wont kill psp but still shouldnt be downloaded. i believe developers deserve their full money in what they get... but it wont kill thm and they have no where to complain when people download